Climate Action

TORONTO (IDN) – Ahead of the next hurricane season in the Caribbean, faith leaders are calling for action from government leaders, the United Nations system, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and regional development institutions.

A statement signed and endorsed by 22 religious leaders from Grenada to Saint Lucia is urging the establishment of debt relief as an instrument for emergency support and reconstruction.

"Across the Caribbean, we still see immense suffering from the hurricanes that landed last year," said Jubilee USA Executive Director Eric LeCompte who endorsed the statement. "Islands that are struggling to recover after natural disasters and meet basic needs of their people should not be making debt payments."

BERLIN (IDN) – The number of tourists around the world grew in 2017 to an all-time record of 7 percent to reach 1.3 billion. Tourism accounts for 10 percent of the world's gross domestic product (GDP), 10 percent of the world’s jobs, and 7 percent of the world’s total exports.

The need to turn these figures into benefits for all people and all communities, "leaving no one behind" – as required by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by the United Nations in September 2015 – was also the subject of ITB 2018, the Berlin travel trade fair in March.

NEW YORK (IDN) – Across the globe, geologists, climate scientists, biologists, chemists and physicists are alarmed, and if there are uncertainties these are whether danger is in the offing very soon or in a few years; about whether our prospects are calamitous or only troublesome.

The lack of dread among the general public about the risks of irreversible damage is worrying. Politics and Science operate on different time lines and with different urgencies. The open question is if the governments of the world’s dozen or so wealthiest countries are up to organizing a workable, equitable and sustainable global response before it is too late.

SYDNEY (IDN) – A peoples’ movement is gathering steam across Australia to stop a project by an Indian company to establish Australia’s biggest ever coal mining project that is supposed to create 10,000 jobs in a remote region of northern Queensland.

“The more I tried to engage in democracy the more I found democracy to be broken,” said Lilli Barto, member of the ‘Stop Adani’ Sydney campaign team addressing a film screening and a protest meeting at inner-Sydney Newtown Neighbourhood Centre on February 22, that was attended by over 200 people.

NEW YORK (IDN) – Two and a half years after the international community adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which pledged not to leave any one behind, women around the world are faced with stark inequalities and grave challenges, says a new report by UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.

BERLIN (IDN) – While the number of new coal-fired power plants China and India are building has declined, the planned expansion in the use of coal in fast-growing emerging economies, such as Turkey, Indonesia and Vietnam, will in part cancel out the reduction, according to a new study.

The study advocates politically feasible solutions for a global coal exit. For example, coal could be pushed out of the energy markets by means of a roadmap to shut down coal mines, stricter power plant regulations and higher carbon prices worldwide.

NEW YORK | TOKYO (IDN-INPS) – Eminent Buddhist philosopher Daisaku Ikeda, president of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI), has welcomed the July 2017 adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) as a turning point in the global history of efforts to achieve peace and disarmament, emphasizing that while nuclear weapons exist, a world of peace and human rights will remain elusive.

According to a press release highlighting major aspects of his proposal issued in Japanese on January 26, Ikeda outlines strategies for gaining support for the Treaty from the nuclear-weapon states and nuclear-dependent states, and calls on Japan to declare its readiness to consider becoming party to the TPNW: "Having experienced the reality of nuclear weapons, Japan cannot turn away from its moral responsibility."

WASHINGTON, D.C. (IDN-INPS) – Citing growing nuclear risks and unchecked climate dangers, the iconic Doomsday Clock is now 30 seconds closer to midnight, the closest to the symbolic point of annihilation that the Clock has been since 1953 at the height of the Cold War.

The decision announced on January 25 to move the Doomsday Clock to two minutes before midnight was made by the 'Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Science and Security Board in consultation with the Board of Sponsors, which includes 15 Nobel Laureates.

TORONTO (IDN) – In the face of U.S. President Donald Trump claiming that "the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive," international scientists have lauded Canada's achievements in the field, and called for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to re-invest in climate science.

In an open letter to him, released in Ottawa on January 22, hundreds of prominent international scientists have raised concern that a crisis is looming for Canadian climate and atmospheric research following the government’s failure to renew or replace the Climate Change and Atmospheric Research (CCAR) program which funded seven research networks.

The author is a Brazilian liberation theologian, author and campaigner for the rights of the poor and disadvantaged. He is a professor of theology, ethics and philosophy at universities all over the world and a member of the Earth Charter Commission. This article is a slightly modified version of an article that first appeared in Other News.

RIO DE JANEIRO (IDN) – Most readers will find it difficult to accept what I am going to express here. Even though it is based on the best scientific minds that have been studying the universe, for almost a century the situation of planet Earth and her eventual collapse – or qualitative leap to another level of reality – has not penetrated into either the collective consciousness or the major academic centres.